“At the end of the day, you’re curious about somebody you’ve never met. “Let’s control ourselves a bit,” he says, addressing fans. Boyega tells me he’s spoken to Foxx but reiterates the importance of privacy. In the celebrity-fandom world, though, Foxx’s medical condition has been a hot topic and (ironically, given the movie’s themes) spurred so many conspiracy theories that when Foxx resurfaced in semipublic-first spotted on a boat in Chicago-the press treated it like a sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. Want more stories like this? Become an Esquire subscriber today. “I’m the guy who’s like, Cool, you gotta have that privacy, regardless of what you’re going through.”ĬOAT AND SHIRT BY BURBERRY. Netflix has done very well in facilitating the press, and Jamie’s team has been very transparent about what the commitments will be or not,” he says. When I ask Boyega if promoting a film without one of its main stars is weird, he shrugs. It’s been impossible to ignore Foxx’s absence from the movie’s press run. It’s an exhausting part of the job that requires not a little diplomacy. For the past few weeks, Boyega has been zipping across the country promoting They Cloned Tyrone ahead of its release, some of which has involved addressing his costar Jamie Foxx’s recovery from an undisclosed medical condition. He orders a Shirley Temple, having already eaten and napped. His chest is out, his skin is glowing, and a durag graces his cornrows. When we meet for dinner a week later at the Central Park–adjacent 1 Hotel restaurant Jams, Boyega steps off the elevator in a pajama-like, salmon-colored Armani button-up with matching pants. JACKET ($1,595), TROUSERS ($650), AND TIE ($195, ON HEAD) BY CANALI COAT ($4,190) BY BALENCIAGA GARDE-ROBE TANK ($520) BY GUCCI BRACELET ($650, ON TIE) BY VERSACE. You’ve got to step in and fill that space. The audience participates in that, and you are selling it to them. It’s all about my art,” he says during our first call over Zoom in late June. What’s that mean? “Toxic humble, to me, is the concept of: I don’t care about the audience. Somehow when Boyega makes this comparison, it’s not remotely obnoxious-he comes off as both confident and totally likable. He could do anything, but what he most wants is an eclectic Joaquin Phoenix– or Tilda Swinton–type range. Lately he’s been taking big swings to fuel big ambitions, and filmmakers, producers, castmates, and audiences instinctively trust his choices. The role immediately thrilled Boyega, a lover of dark humor and provocation. His latest character, Fontaine, is the grounding force in a trippy universe where Black people are being lied to in multiple dimensions. He has also actively defied being typecast, most recently starring as a bank-robbing Marine vet in last year’s Breaking and as a nineteenth-century West African monarch in the Viola Davis–led The Woman King. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play These days, he has more control over his career than ever before and considers himself a collaborator with the directors he works with now. The experience was brutal, but made him want to bring his most unfettered self to his work. He made headlines for speaking frankly about how Disney sidelined his Star Wars character. After a youth spent anchoring a stupendously profitable blockbuster franchise, he’s proved himself as a performer who can seemingly do anything, onscreen or off. It’s taken Boyega a while to be able to comfortably flex. He commands the room, even if the character he’s playing is somebody low on the totem pole, so to speak.” “If you’re gonna be a leading man, there has to be some kind of gravity around you, and John definitely has that in spades. “If he says, ‘This don’t feel right,’ I’m gonna listen,” Taylor explains over the phone. They reset the shot.Ĭall it the power of John Boyega in action. “There’s no way I’m still on the ground,” Boyega said. (The less said about this character, the better, to avoid spoilers.) A crane shot had been set up solely to push in on Boyega lying down, this time on the ground. In a later scene, Fontaine and the gang confront a gravel-voiced white villain. JACKET ($1,595), TROUSERS ($650), AND TIE ($195, ON HEAD) BY CANALI COAT ($4,190, IN ARM) BY BALENCIAGA GARDE-ROBE TANK ($520) BY GUCCI BRACELET ($650, ON TIE) BY VERSACE.
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